


Back to the Start

by enid_salt



Series: The High School 'verse that never meant to be but always was [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, High School AU, M/M, Prequel, the actual meet cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6184582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enid_salt/pseuds/enid_salt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every picture has a story of a thousand words and every story a beginning.</p>
<p>This is it.</p>
<p>(The prequel that no one asked for to 'Blow Out (My Sixteen Candles)')</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back to the Start

It’s a nice day.

The sun shines without burning, the breezes that flow through the open air are welcome and ticklish. There isn’t a blade of grass out of place or a cloud too thick in the sky.

Steve Rogers is scared shitless of it all.

The city, god help him, was all he knew. Chaos and smog and exhaled breath, it’s home. It was. But the hospital in the suburbs is better paid, as his ma says, even if the subsidized tenement is barely a few square feet bigger on one side than the flat they had. ‘Just barely’ describes the place in a nutshell - just barely meets their new budget, just barely up to code, just barely places Steve in the high school with all the middle class kids. 

The campus is open layout with three moderate sized buildings in a semi-circle configuration, leaving the middle ground as a sizable quad interspersed with bench tables.

He trudges along the edge, weaving around the crowds. The only thing worse than landing in high school with a bunch of people who grew up together - doing it a week late because of the difference in schedule between traditional school year and year-round school. 

He makes it to the office and even get his schedule before the first bell. If all his prayers get answered, the teachers will skip making him do the New Kid Introduction. 

Fourth period answers nothing - Steve stutters his way through his name, former neighborhood, and mentions that he “likes drawing”. He lets the crimson flush that’s heating up his whole head mellow out as he stumbles back to his desk. 

“Drawing’s cool.”

He looks up. The blonde girl sitting in front of him glances back with a quick smile. They had all been asked to speak their names right before Steve introduced himself. If he’s got it memorized, she’s Sharon Carter.

Steve perks up, “I like to think so.”

She nods, still focusing on the front. 

“Still life? Abstract? Some other genre because I can’t think of anything that isn’t those two?”

Steve starts off notes as the lesson proper starts, “Yes and no, more like a little bit of everything.”

“Cool,” she whispers and darts a smirking look back, like the word itself has become their private joke.

“Cool.”

He feels a little less cool, grinning like a loon in the middle of the class for the rest of the period but it’s worth it.

At the bell, she turns in her seat before packing up, “Do you have your lunch now or later?”

Steve glances at the half sheet that he stuck to the front of his notebook.

“Now, yeah.”

She smiles, “Then join me and some friends at our table.”

He nods and follows her to the indoor seating near the cafeteria line. There’s only a haphazard pile of stuff on the adjacent table when they arrive but when they come back with trays of food, there’s a group formed around it. A trio of people are seated and talking but there’s also a pair of guys tossing a complex looking paper airplane back and forth, remarking on its short flights.

“Hold up,” the guy sitting, a brunet with shades on inside, peers over his lenses and assesses them standing in place at the head of the table, “Carter, who’s this? I can’t have unknown variables during work, you know this.”

The whole of them have paused and turned to Steve and Sharon. Firing squad of impending judgement seems like an appropriate description for the feeling he gets.

“Tony Stark, may I introduce Steve Rogers,” she has set her tray down and motions toward him a la a game show host presenting a prize package. She then takes his tray and sets it in front of the seat next to hers.

“And since we’re going formal, I do request that if your lunchtime work requires anything more than a paper and pen, it be moved to a more appropriate venue.”

She is seated and her gleam is damn near stately, staring Tony down.

He rolls his eyes, “If you must know, I gave up on live cultures already. We’re figuring out some aerodynamic designs now.”

The blond guy who had been tossing the paper back nods, “Got some good stuff going, Sharon. Barnes, show her Quintet.”

Barnes must be the other guy, with longer, close to shaggy brown hair, wide-eyed and gazing at Sharon and Steve seated close together. He’s good looking, or at least Steve thinks so, with a good jaw, flush lips, and blue eyes like Steve’s favorite color pencil.

One of the red headed girls seated across from Tony tosses a baby carrot at him, “James!”

He snaps out of it and flicks his wrist to launch the projectile. But he was startled and the action had way too much force behind it. It sails past the blond and into the next table over. The heavy weight paper and structural design keep it intact but send the food it landed into flying outward towards the people seated around it.

“Run.”

Is all the guy says. They all grab what they can and scatter, Steve trailing after Sharon down the nearest corridor. He didn’t catch which way the girls and Tony headed but he can see the boys just trailing behind Sharon. The stress though, get to him, and he starts to lag.

The blond has glanced behind and shouted something when Steve stumbles, and next thing he knows, he’s dragged sideways.

It’s a staircase enclosure, the light of the steps just ending a few inches in front of their feet. A quick glance wouldn’t spot them but someone followed in, they’re be caught.

Steve doesn’t quite see the guy’s face well, between the wheeze that’s starting and the dim lighting. He’s looking out the inset window of the door, arm outstretched to shield Steve.

“Coast looks clear,” he mumbles, pulling his arms back quick.

Steve tries to talk but a cough comes out first.

“Fuck - “ the other boy drops his shit and grabs Steve again. They dart out the door and he moves them in the shortest diagonal path to a door to the right and two rooms down from where they were.

The door swings open and he shoves Steve inside, “Asthma, I think. I’ll check on the others.”

Steve only gets one more brief look at him, when he speeds off but looks back, before the door swings shut again. It’s the nurse’s office and Sharon and the blond guy - he introduces himself as Clint Barton, had been hiding there. The nurse pulls out the inhaler he had handed over in the morning and he lies down. When he wakes, his stuff is piled neatly on the chair next to him and the nurse lets him go on for the day, he had only napped through his remaining lunch period and the study hall he had after. 

At the end of the day, there’s a slightly different, more streamlined version of the paper craft stuck in the seam of his locker. He pulls it out, and under the written prompts unfolds it to see the message inside.

“Sorry I’m an asshole. JB”

After a small laugh he re-assembles it and places it on the empty shelving inside his locker.

Sharon greets him the, walking up beside him, “Hey, are you doing better?”

He nods and shuts his locker, “Yeah, thanks.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Steve double takes as she begins walking, “What?”

She looks back, “I’m walking you home.”

Steve squares his shoulders and holds his chin up, falling back into the role he curated back in the city to survive, “I can get by on my own.”

Sharon smiles, “Yeah, but I want to.”

She holds out her hand and Steve takes it.

“Cool with me,” he says and she laughs, bright and loud.

That night, he sketches her smile on the paper she wrote her number on with his usual gray granite. In his sketchbook, he draws a pair of eyes and takes his time using his favorite color pencil to color them in just so.

Neither one is perfect or too true to life. But it’s a start.


End file.
